Bonds of Blood and Memory
by Celtic Knot
Summary: The Doctor meets a woman calling herself The Maga, who wields the magic of the Carrionites with the power and vision of a Time Lord. The combination is enough to turn worlds upside down-or drive the strongest of minds mad. Post-WoM.


_This actually grew out of a discussion on Facebook, in which people were picking their own "Time Lord names." I picked one, and this story kind of wrote itself from there._

**Bonds of Blood and Memory**

Chapter 1: The Maga

Hidden in the ruins of a shattered planet, she watched. Sweet smoke drifted through the air, curling around a ball of crystal nearly as old as Time itself. The crystal resonated, and she with it, and together they peered across the centuries, over the light-years.

No longer could she travel through Time as she once had, but then, she no longer needed nor wanted to. Her experiences—captivity, war, infiltration and betrayal—had left her profoundly changed, an outcast from the very people she'd saved. She had never returned to them; they never would have accepted what she had become. Now it was too late to even try. She still wasn't sure if she regretted that or not. After all, it was partly her own doing.

There was one other left, though, one survivor, and he was completely unaware of her continued existence. Together they would be the last of their once-glorious civilization. But they were not together, separated instead by whole galaxies, sometimes by thousands of millennia.

The last two Children of Gallifrey.

Long had she watched him and guided him. Using the skills she had learned from her captors, She saw where he was needed, and where he needed to be, and sent him there, her hand unseen. The rest was always up to him, but she knew him well. He always did the right thing.

Well, almost always. He wasn't perfect, of course, and sometimes he mucked things up. And she couldn't help but feel responsible, not so much for the damage he did to the Universe, but for the pain it caused him. It hurt her to see him hurting. But it seemed that the more she tried to protect him, the worse he was wounded. His future was in constant flux; she couldn't see the path ahead of him at all. So she mucked things up too, sometimes.

But this, this was her most colossal failure yet.

He had finally snapped. The weight of responsibility that she had placed on his shoulders had become too much, and he was collapsing beneath it. She realized now that she had idealized him, that despite his flaws she had come to see him as godlike, capable of anything, infinitely clever and infinitely strong. And she had pushed him too far.

He couldn't be allowed to continue like this, but nor could she fix this from a distance as was her customary method. So she summoned him.

A scrap of coral, painted blue, hovered in the midst of a three-dimensional star map, a piece resonating in tune with the larger whole. She touched it, and spoke the Words of Power that forged the link between its will and her own.

"_I call across the seas of Space,  
><em>_I call across the sands of Time:  
><em>_To Gallifrey proceed apace.  
><em>_I summon you by word and sign."_

Moments later, an unmistakable mechanical wheeze sounded, and a strong wind blew through the room as The Doctor's TARDIS materialized before her.

* * *

><p>The Doctor was tired of running. Ever since the Bowie Base One disaster, he'd been running, trying to leave the guilt and pain and horror behind, trying to avoid his impending doom. Always moving, never stopping, filling the present with adventures so he wouldn't have to think about the past.<p>

It wasn't working.

He was _so tired._

With the TARDIS's controls set to random, he pulled a lever without enthusiasm, and glanced dully at the coordinates on the readout.

And did a double take, his hearts pounding.

It couldn't be.

10-0-11-0-0 by 0-2.

"Not here," he whispered. With sudden energy, he flung himself t the console, hands flying through the dematerialization sequence as fast as he could.

With a faint whine, the TARDIS shut down.

"No, no, no, no, _no!" _shouted The Doctor, pounding the casing of the Time rotor with a fist. "Don't do this, don't leave me here!"

Something tickled at the back of his mind, and without thinking he reached into his pocket and withdrew his psychic paper.

_I have control of the TARDIS. Come outside. Do not be afraid._

The doors swung open—which should have been impossible, without power.

The Doctor sighed heavily. There was no recourse. And so, for the first time since he'd left it broken and blazing, he stepped out onto the surface of Gallifrey.

Mercifully, he was spared the sight of blasted landscapes under familiar stars. The TARDIS had materialized indoors, inside what might once have been a ship of some kind. A derelict, rusted and disused, but obviously lived in.

Probably by the woman standing before him, a sad smile on her face.

"Welcome home," she said softly.

Her words sent a hot flare of anger through him. "That's not funny," he growled through clenched teeth. "Who are you? Why did you bring me here? Why _here?"_

To his surprise, the woman looked hurt. "You don't recognize me?" She shook her head, black curls bobbing around her youthful face. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. I've been through a few regenerations since you saw me last—not as many as you have, but a few."

_Regenerations? _ Dumbfounded, The Doctor could only stammer, "What… what?"

"Yes, Doctor," she said gently. "I'm a Time Lady." She frowned, and something about the small furrow that appeared between her emerald eyes gave The Doctor the strangest sense of déjà vu. "Well, I'm Gallifreyan, anyway. I don't do much time traveling anymore."

_Someone else survived, _was all The Doctor could think. Would the roller coaster never end? It seemed that every time he started to come to terms with being the last of the Time Lords, he met another survivor. His hope was restored—would it only be dashed again?

Still, he couldn't help but be overjoyed.

But she wasn't finished. "I'm called The Maga," she continued. "But more importantly, Doctor—I'm your sister."

The Doctor's jaw dropped, and for a moment, he couldn't speak. His hearts skipped, threatened to stop. "That's impossible," he whispered, reeling. "My sister disappeared almost eight hundred years ago. She went back in Time, to the earliest days of the Universe, to find out if the legends of the Carrionites were…" He trailed off as he finally took in the surroundings. Incense, small stuffed dolls, a bubbling cauldron, a ball of glowing crystal. The implements of Carrionite magic. "Dimeliora," he breathed. "Is it really you?"

"That is no longer my name," said The Maga, a trifle sharply, "but yes. It's me, my brother."

And she spoke his name.


End file.
